A missing illuminated manuscript takes private eye Spenser to a Boston campus with familiar extracurricular activities -- student radicalism, sex and drugs -- but it is an attractive, flaky gift charged with murder -- who really gives him something to think about. The publishers make the comparison to Philip Marlowe (author-professor Parker did a dissertation on Chandler-Hammett) but it won't serve him well -- there's some of the toughness and the terseness but the hat's much too big for him and it hasn't got the right slouch.
